There are some battery-powered planes, really cool, but small, short-range hobby machines. A battery powered sailplane makes a lot of sense.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 11:19:23 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:
Dirigibles.
The problem with blimpy things is their huge surface area and fragile structure. They tend to blow away.
People are getting serious about electric planes, battery powered or not.
A Chevy Volt sort of thing makes sense.
Locomotives are usually diesel-electric, and some ships have had oil-powered generators driving electric propellers. Electronics can do continuously variable transmissions better than any mechanical device can. Those MEs need to think harder.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
You don't really need CVT on ships. They already have fluid drive, lol
-- Rick
On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:39:08 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:
All are. Only legacy locos use for show/museum purpose differ from that.
Although Siemens was stupid enough to make a dual diesel direct drive thing used to haul people in cities stupid enough to buy them. But that ain't no freight train or regular passenger commute train.
That thing in SF with cops who shoot folks doesn't count and electric trolleys either (neither)
All real trains are diesel driven electrics now.
On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:39:08 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:
All modern submarines. Very few WWII era pure diesels left in service. I am sure Russia is selling enemies all diesel piles of crap.
They sold a few small ones to that retarded terrorist bearded asshole who convoluted a lot of Iran's thinking too. Glad he is gone.
On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:39:08 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:
Variable torque V-belt drives work very well.
Can't pull huge loads though. Too lossy at that level.
Maybe some model where you only rent the batteries. ? Batteries = fuel. I drop my used ones off and pick up a charged set. You'd have to make changing batteries easy.
George H.
ill be necessarily, for efficiency's sake) strongly alkaline solutions.
It's no big deal. The pulp and paper industry has been been digesting ligni n out of wood chips with NaOH for more than a century now. It's not the onl y process for turning wood chips into paper pulp for making fine paper (for writing and book printing, as opposed to newsprint) but it is used on a ve ry large scale.
he scale of the experimental setup, much less on the proposed industrial sc ales when something inevitably breaks.
Don't be silly. KOH and NaOH in air turn into sodium and potassium carbonat e quite quickly, and the technology for keeping them inside the plant is di tches and walls, which is to say irrigation techniques.
nds up paying for it. If companies producing the CO2 have to do it, there w ill be a long, dragged out legal wrangle first, and then the consumers of t heir products will end up paying for it.
No need for the legal wrangle, if the laws are written clearly enough in th e first place, despite the best efforts of the industry lobbyists.
little farther.
rs, the process should be made PROFITABLE. Then, you would have a hard time getting companies to NOT do it.
Even the Greenies understand that perfectly. Unlike you, they also understa nd that there's no way of minimising CO2 output that doesn't cost us money
- in the short term. Again - unlike you - they also understand that the lon g term costs of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere will eventually be spectacularly high.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
a little farther.
yers, the process should be made PROFITABLE. Then, you would have a hard ti me getting companies to NOT do it.
tand that there's no way of minimising CO2 output that doesn't cost us mone y - in the short term. Again - unlike you - they also understand that the l ong term costs of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere will eventuall y be spectacularly high.
and yet they oppose the one and only technology that can eliminate our depe ndance on fossils: nuclear.
NT
How much carbon is left in the ash, imbecile?
er a little farther.
payers, the process should be made PROFITABLE. Then, you would have a hard time getting companies to NOT do it.
p.
rstand that there's no way of minimising CO2 output that doesn't cost us mo ney - in the short term. Again - unlike you - they also understand that the long term costs of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere will eventua lly be spectacularly high.
pendence on fossils: nuclear.
There are good reasons for being sceptical about nuclear fission - the obvi ous one is that sixty years after nuclear fission reactors started creating nuclear waste we still haven't got a permanent repository for nuclear wast e - which is very radioactive and stays radio-active for about 100,000 year s.
If nuclear fission really was the one and only alternative to burning fossi l carbon we might knuckle down and solve the problem, but in reality solar and wind power are perfectly capable of taking over the role of keeping our civilisation running. Wind power costs about the same as it does to get po wer by burning fossil carbon, while solar power is roughly twice as expensi ve.
Of course, if we were making enough solar cells to supply most of our energ y needs, the capital cost per kilowatt would be at least halved by the usua l economies of scale. The rule of thumb is that a tenfold increase in manuf acturing volume halves the unit price, and both Germans and the Chinese hav e demonstrated this in practice. The Chinese did it quite recently and esse ntially drove the Germans out of the business.
It would be nice if we had better batteries and other power storage schemes than we have now, but people are working on that. It looks as thermal sola r, with nice big well-insulated tanks of molten salt, can store enough ener gy to keep the world running overnight, but so far there are only a few pro totype systems running - they do have to be big to demonstrate the principl e convincingly.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
:
derstand that there's no way of minimising CO2 output that doesn't cost us money - in the short term. Again - unlike you - they also understand that t he long term costs of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere will event ually be spectacularly high.
dependence on fossils: nuclear.
vious one is that sixty years after nuclear fission reactors started creati ng nuclear waste we still haven't got a permanent repository for nuclear wa ste - which is very radioactive and stays radio-active for about 100,000 ye ars.
Its not too hard to do.
sil carbon we might knuckle down and solve the problem, but in reality sola r and wind power are perfectly capable of taking over the role of keeping o ur civilisation running. Wind power costs about the same as it does to get power by burning fossil carbon, while solar power is roughly twice as expen sive.
rgy needs, the capital cost per kilowatt would be at least halved by the us ual economies of scale. The rule of thumb is that a tenfold increase in man ufacturing volume halves the unit price, and both Germans and the Chinese h ave demonstrated this in practice. The Chinese did it quite recently and es sentially drove the Germans out of the business.
es than we have now, but people are working on that. It looks as thermal so lar, with nice big well-insulated tanks of molten salt, can store enough en ergy to keep the world running overnight, but so far there are only a few p rototype systems running - they do have to be big to demonstrate the princi ple convincingly.
Wind, solar and batteries are an enormously long way away from being able t o supply the world's energy needs. They're not even in the running. Give it another 100 years and it'll be worth evaluating them again.
NT
OK, Romney might fit, but Bush !!! Oh, Bush I (aka George Herbert Walker Bush , "Bush 41", the forty-first president... for a moment I thought you might have meant W. Nevermind....
W was smart enough to hire people that were smarter than he was. His dad was a genuine patriot and public servant.
The idea of planting a democracy in the middle east was great in theory, but didn't work out. O made the same mistake in Lybia. For some populations, a brutal despot is the best form of government.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
:
over a little farther.
axpayers, the process should be made PROFITABLE. Then, you would have a har d time getting companies to NOT do it.
asp.
derstand that there's no way of minimising CO2 output that doesn't cost us money - in the short term. Again - unlike you - they also understand that t he long term costs of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere will event ually be spectacularly high.
dependence on fossils: nuclear.
vious one is that sixty years after nuclear fission reactors started creati ng nuclear waste we still haven't got a permanent repository for nuclear wa ste -
Yeah Obama killed Yucca mountain.
I thought ~1000 yr's was enough to drop by activity by 100 or so.
sil carbon we might knuckle down and solve the problem, but in reality sola r and wind power are perfectly capable of taking over the role of keeping o ur civilisation running. Wind power costs about the same as it does to get power by burning fossil carbon, while solar power is roughly twice as expen sive.
rgy needs, the capital cost per kilowatt would be at least halved by the us ual economies of scale. The rule of thumb is that a tenfold increase in man ufacturing volume halves the unit price, and both Germans and the Chinese h ave demonstrated this in practice. The Chinese did it quite recently and es sentially drove the Germans out of the business.
I guess we can agree to disagree about solar and wind. I like wind power and pay a bit more each month to get all our electricity from the nearby windmills. But I don't think it will every be a major source.
People are silly about solar (electric) power. And storage adds expense.
George H.
es than we have now, but people are working on that. It looks as thermal so lar, with nice big well-insulated tanks of molten salt, can store enough en ergy to keep the world running overnight, but so far there are only a few p rototype systems running - they do have to be big to demonstrate the princi ple convincingly.
We have this phenomenon in the USA that we call "winter." The sun gets low in the sky and it can rain and snow for days, even weeks, at a time.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Not too difficult. The problem was that the people he hired weren't smart e nough.
It's never the best form of government, but the process of getting to a bet ter form of government takes good luck or close supervision - revolutions t end generate dictatorships. Dubbya's unwillingness to pay for an adequate a rmy of occupation in Irak turns out to have been an error that made the inv asion of Irak something between pointless and counter-productive, and thus a total waste of money and lives.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
CO2.
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aActually, they get the government their constitution is designed to give th em.
Clinton and Obama are both charismatic - they wouldn't have got the job oth erwise. Neither of them is particularly sociopathic - or no more so than po liticians have to be, but the way US presidential candidates are selected d oes put a premium on manipulating a lot of different party machines in the critical states to give them enough states to make them candidates.
Less baroque constitutional arrangements put less emphasis on manipulating a lot of total strangers, and tend to produce people who work better with t he relatively small group that they have to manage after they get elected.
The founding tax evaders wanted people who could be relied on to kowtow to people with money who weren't part of their immediate circle - the people t hat owned the country wanted to run the country - and the electoral college system does tend to deliver people who can be influenced.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
e:
ote:
It already is in Germany and Denamrk.
The whole point about thermal solar is that storing energy as heat in well- insulated tanks of molten salt, before you convert it to electricity, is re markably cheap.
And having your environment screwed up by anthropogenic global warming also adds expense. Paying for the predictable extra expense now to avoid the un predictable extra expense later is called insurance, and prudent people do it.
hemes than we have now, but people are working on that. It looks as thermal solar, with nice big well-insulated tanks of molten salt, can store enough energy to keep the world running overnight, but so far there are only a fe w prototype systems running - they do have to be big to demonstrate the pri nciple convincingly.
Oddly enough, this also happens in Germany and Denmark. The Germans want to build solar farms in the Sahara and a high-voltage transmission line to sh ip the power up to Germany. Californians might find it easier to build thei r solar farms in Nevada and Arizona. Of course this depends on there being intelligent life in California, and there's not much evidence for that on t his usegroup.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
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